5 April, 2012

We have previously established that I am a huge pokémon nerd. We also established that I’m a generation or two behind everyone else when it comes to actually playing the games. During a recent trip to England, I came across a copy of Pokémon Black at a discounted price, and as the full price was already a good bit less than the Norwegian one, this was a bargain I jumped on. The reason it was discounted was probably the not too recent announcement that Black and White 2 are coming, so I am still behind the curve, but I might actually catch up with it before the next release.

I haven’t played too much yet; only now that Easter is approaching did I really have time to sit down with it. I don’t feel ready to do a full review, and don’t see that one would be needed in any case. If you’ve played any pokémon game, you know the gist of it. Travel around, kidnap random, possibly sentient, creatures, and force them to battle each other in gladiatorial blood sports for your amusement and social advancement. There’s a lot of them, and you should capture one of each, for reasons of scientific curiosity. Beyond that, it’s all bells and whistles – but important ones, to be sure.

In lieu of a review, then, have some random thoughts about the game instead.

1. Having to hold B down to run is a step backwards.

In SoulSilver there was a simple toggle switch, always available on the touch screen, which was a much better solution.

2. The touch screen is filled with the damn C-gear.

I get that the C-gear is cool and all, but I play with a DS Lite, which is terrible at the whole connecting to the Internet thing, and I don’t know anybody else who plays, so I very rarely need it. I would much rather have the more often used menu items readily available here, like in SoulSilver.

3. The L key no longer acts like the A key.

Wah, wah, everything was better in SoulSilver, wah.

4. The graphics are great.

Generation IV looked good. This looks great.

5. Snivy is adorable.

Lookit that face! I know grass type isn’t the greatest, but this one looked too cool to pick anything else (see also: Bulbasaur). I named mine McSnooty.

6. The Team Plasma storyline is interesting

Storyline isn’t the strong suit of Pokémon, but in this game the villainous team’s objective seems to be to liberate all pokémon from captivity by trainers. After really dodging the whole blood sports thing for however many games, it’s interesting to see it actually engaged with. I suspect it’ll turn out the Plasmas have hefty ulterior motives, though.

7. Team Plasma has a kick-ass battle theme.

I get so pleased every time I get to battle a Plasma grunt. Just listen to this thing!

12 March, 2012

If you’ve never lived through the wonderfully frustrating experience of trying to catch a particularly recalcitrant legendary pokémon, I don’t expect you to understand why I hurt my shoulder punching the air after finally bagging Ho-Oh last night.

It had taken me quite some time, you see, and been sufficiently frustrating that I took a couple of very long breaks in the middle. Ho-Oh, like most legendary pokémon has a very low catch rate, meaning that even when it is reduced to a very low health, you need a bunch of tries before it gets successfully caught. Putting a pokémon to sleep, or poisoning or paralysing it can help, but Ho-Oh knows the move Safeguard, which protects it from that kind of tampering. Safeguard has 25 uses, while its other three moves have only 5 uses each, which is significant because once it runs out of moves, it begins to Struggle, which does damage to itself – and when you’re trying to catch it, you’ve likely reduced it as low as you can already. In other words, you have 40 rounds to sufficiently weaken and catch it before it kills itself. There’s only one in the game, so when that happens, you have to shut the game off, and start over from your previous save. But yesterday, I got it at last.

The preceding paragraph is probably one of the geekier things I’ve written, and it makes me seem like a huge pokémon nerd, which I really don’t think I am. The fact that I managed to unload all that might speak against me on this, but looking around at some of the truly dedicated fans, I find myself lacking indeed.

I played pokémon as a child, the Red version to be exact, simply because I liked the colour red better at the time. Later, I also played Silver, because I liked Lugia better than Ho-Oh, not because of a preference in valuable metals. I watched a few episodes of the show, and the first movie, and I dabbled in the trading card game, but it was really the actual games that interested me.

After Silver, which I doubt I fully finished, I took a long break. Not from any resolve or anything, I just didn’t get the next one. It wasn’t until the summer of 2010, when I bought a DS on sale, and a copy of the remake SoulSilver (because Lugia is still better than Ho-Oh) I got the bug again. I played a good deal that summer, but when classes stared up again, it ended up in a drawer. Then a played a bit at Christmas, then back in the drawer till Summer again. This time I didn’t even play at Christmas, but yesterday I got it out of the drawer in a moment of boredom, and set to bringing that dang bird down. Now I’m probably going to keep at it. Not like I’m anywhere near done, I’ve got 195 of the 493 pokémon possible to get in this game.

As usual, I am a generation behind everyone else – I’ll probably get around to trying Black or White when the sequels come out. Actually, I was sort of hoping Nintendo would keep doing remakes of old games, like they did with Gold and Silver, and I could maybe jump in and finally see the Ruby and Sapphire storyline when it came out as EarthRuby and StarSapphire or something along those lines. Doesn’t look like that’s the plan though, so I may as well jump ahead.

Pokémon isn’t really about the story in any case; which is not to say that the story sucks, just that it is not the main selling point. It’s about the collecting, the training up and the cataloguing. I think Pokémon would be a very bad game for someone with real OCD, but for someone like me, it’s perfect. Like I said, I’ve got I’ve got 195 of 493, can’t stop there! Never mind that getting a perfect score is actually impossible, and getting a high one gets harder and harder as others abandon this generation of games, got to keep going till the bitter end.

Favourite pokémon? From previous comments, you might think it’s Lugia, and Lugia is indeed up there, but the number one spot goes to someone else. The very first I had, and the one I keep going back to – stalwart and trustworthy Bulbasaur. When I was moving away from York, one of my friends even used her mystical baking arts to make this fantastic going-away present: